New Books for Review

Sunday, August 2, 2015

PUYB Virtual Book Club Chats with David Berndt, Ph.D, author of Overcoming Anxiety

David J. Berndt, Ph.D. was an Associate
Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Chicago where he
published or presented over 80 papers and articles before establishing a
private practice. Dr. Berndt currently lives in Charleston, S.C. where he also
teaches in an adjunct capacity at the College of Charleston. He is best known
for his psychological tests The Multiscore Depression Inventory, and the
Multiscore Depression Inventory for Children, both from Western
Psychological Services.

The good news is that anxiety can be
overcome without relying on medication. Psychologist David Berndt, Ph.D., in Overcoming
Anxiety outlines several self-help methods for management of anxiety and
worry. In clear simple language and a conversational style, Dr. Berndt shares
with the reader powerful step by step proven techniques for anxiety
management.

·How to stop or interrupt toxic thoughts that keep you locked in anxiety.

·How to harness and utilize your worries, so they work for you.

·Relief from anxiety through desensitization and exposure therapy.

The book was designed to be used alone as
self-help or in conjunction with professional treatment Dr. Berndt draws upon
his experience as a clinician and academic researcher to give accessible help
to the reader who wants to understand and manage their anxiety.

For More Information

Welcome to the book club, David. Can
we begin by having you tell us why you wrote your book, Overcoming Anxiety?

David:Thank you, Dorothy, Tracee and Cheryl, for having
me drop by the Virtual Book Club for some questions. I wrote the book because I
felt that I had learned a lot from my patients over the years about what works.
For example it is all well and good to do try and change negative thoughts, but
how exactly do you do that? Or if you use a distraction technique, are there
times where that might make the anxiety worse?

The feedback from my patients over the years have
made me much more effective, and so I wanted to share some of things I have
learned with a wider audience, frankly to help more people.

Also, I learned about the publishing side of the
business because my wife is a NY Times bestselling author, so I know a
little bit about how to get the word out.

What is one way to relieve anxiety?

David: The shortest and quickest answer would be to ask
yourself what you have done in the past that worked, and see if you can turn it
more systematically into something helpful. Most people, for example, have used
a TV or music some other stimulus to distract themselves from angry or anxious
feelings. I have a really cool distraction technique in Chapter One that
includes elements of self-hypnosis, mindfulness, and distraction.

We can discuss how to use distraction in a simple
way. Assuming you are not in any real threat or danger (that would be a bad
time to use distraction!), then find something compelling from your past to
distract you. If you were on the high school football team and had a key moment
that the fans all cheered, that would be a very compelling memory, but don’t
just remember it, relive it.

Or let’s say you already sometimes listen to music
to distract yourself from an unpleasant feeling or thought. You could do it
better and more systematically. Your favorite-song-ever would work better than
whatever is in your iPod right now, because it is more likely to move you. You
might also burn a CD with uplifting favorite songs that would help in some
situations, and your playlist of calming, peaceful songs, when that is needed.

Of course, in the first instance, it would work
best if you really loved sports and were good at them. In the music example it
is more likely to work if you really love music or in the past at least have
found that music helps. The idea is to find a compelling memory or group of
memories and mine them for nuggets of really interesting gems.

Is there more than one kind of anxiety
disorder?

David: Sure. The most frequent disorders related to
anxiety are the phobias, and what we call Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD).
Some phobias, like fear of clowns, (there really is such a phobia) aren’t likely
to interfere with everyday life, but others, like social phobias (fear of being
in social situations) or agoraphobia (literally fear of open spaces but real
fears being out of your house), can be debilitating. In GAD the anxiety is more
pervasive and occurs in many contexts.

There are a host of less frequent but more
specialized anxiety-related problems that I will be dealing with in my next
book, such as a skin picking disorder (excoriation) hair pulling
(Trichotillomania), insomnia, and Complex PTSD.

One size does not fit all in these disorders when
it comes to treatment. For example the kinds of CBT interventions needed for
compulsive thoughts are different than the kinds needed for your standard CBT
therapy.

Why are there more cases of anxiety in the
U.S. than Europe?

David: First, the numbers. In the USA, combining all the
types of anxiety disorders, there seems to be about a 28% lifetime incidence,
while in Europe that number (the number of people who have any anxiety disorder
in their lifetime), is a little over 13%. The number of people currently
suffering from anxiety tends to be about half that number (e.g., 6% in one year
in Europe).

While I could criticize USA psychiatry as often
being prone to making diagnostic errors (being out of line with other
psychiatrists worldwide), they seem to be improving in recent decades. So, if
it’s not the psychiatrists’ fault, why the difference?

The anxiety diagnosis most discrepant in frequency
seems to be PTSD, with social anxiety a close second.While some of the PTSD in the USA can be
secondary to USA involvement in more and prolonged wars that would not account
for much of the difference. More likely, it is the greater domestic violence in
the USA, where such violence is 3-4 times more common in the states than in
Europe.

Social anxiety is a relatively new diagnosis, but
it has caught on like wildfire. I think the main difference here, and in other
anxiety disorders, is the fact that the USA allows drug manufactures to
advertise, something upon which the Europeans look askance. Between
antidepressants and antianxiety drugs, a full 25% of women in the USA are
medicated in order to reduce the size of their feelings. While in many cases
those feelings need to be harnessed and in some cases medicated, I think our
culture is far too quick to discredit emotions and disempower women, who bring
a different set of talents to the table, including their emotional lives. The
profit motive might also be in play for the drug companies.

Tell us about the Multiscore Depression
Inventory?

David: The Multiscore Depression Inventory grew
out of my research in depression early in my career. I knew fairly early on
that depression was more complicated than we were treating it with our
diagnostic system, and I wanted to know what symptoms played a role in
different kinds of depression. At the time there was no way to measure the
different components of depression with any accuracy, and all the other tests
only gave one measure of depression – how severe it was – and not any way to
determine which symptoms were more prominent in an individual.

I knew instinctively that someone who was
depressed because of guilt and self-esteem issues might be different from
someone else who was predominantly confused and hopeless. I also felt some
symptoms might be better than others at predicting response to different
treatments.

While it grew out of my need for a better research
instrument, we quickly learned that clinicians found it valuable, and I have
earned royalties on it for more than 20 years. A colleague and I developed a
children’s version, which proved to be even more popular, in part because we
had the children write the questions.

What would you like to say to your readers
and fans?

David: I would like to thank everyone who bought the book
and I hope you find it useful. Only about a third of the people who have
anxiety ever get help with it, and if you know someone in that situation,
please consider giving them Overcoming Anxiety to help them gain some
control over it. For readers who already are in treatment or have family and
friends who are, I hope the book will give you some ideas about how you can
change the techniques or strategies you currently use, by customizing them or
adding a few new techniques to your arsenal.

I value your feedback, just as I have the feedback
from my patients, and I would like to hear from you about things that did or
did not work, and what you would like to see more of in subsequent books. I
plan to write several books for the Psychology Knowledge series, and if you sign up at the Psychology Knowledge
Readers Group you can learn about my other books and get free information and
pdf reports on this and other topics in psychology.

1 comment:

Thanks again to everyone at the Virtual Book Club; we seem to be holding steady at either #1 or #2 in Anxiety and Phobias category for Kindle, and have started selling more print copies since that is at other retailers. I am so pleased that many of the reviewers not only liked the book but found it helpful